Swimming Free of the Matriarchy: Sexual Baptism and Feminine Individuality in Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples

Critics have often commented upon the strong feminist and sexual implications of Eudora Welty's story-cycle The Golden Apples. Patricia Yaeger calls The Golden Apples "a beautifully crafted and gender-preoccupied novel whose emphasis on sexuality ... has not been fully comprehended" (956). Julia Demmin and Daniel Curley note the book's emphasis on "not only the ancient myths of the male godhead but also the even more ancient myths of the female mysteries" (242), and Daniele Pitavy-Souques points out the "strong sexual connotation" (263) of the mythical stories that lend the narrative a sort of structure. One aspect of The Golden Apple's powerful sexual imagery that has long gone unexamined is Welty's unique and subversive connection of sexuality with water imagery. Scholars have frequently ignored (or at least not fully explored) the thematic ramifications of the ever-present water images in The Golden Apples. Moon Lake, the Big Black River, the Mississippi River, even the Pacific Ocean: water images pervade and unite the stories that compose this volume. Noel Polk has observed that in Welty's work, water "is the matrix, our nourishment, and our source of life; but it is also mysterious and fraught with peril" (96). In The Golden Apples, Welty intensifies the peril as well as the nourishment, forming a subtle but significant link between the water images and the themes of feminine and sexual power, a link that manifests itself most obviously and powerfully in "Moon Lake" and "The Wanderers." The lake at the heart of "Moon Lake," central to The Golden Apples both physically and thematically, stands as the most important of these bodies of water; it practically bursts with almost too-obvious phallic imagery, a curious and significant reversal of the convention that always regards water as a feminine symbol. From the outset, Welty identifies the girls' daily immersion as utterly male through the whimsical song "Mr. Dip," which the counselors and campers almost worshipfully sing as they prepare to enter the lake (113-114). The girls fear the "water snakes [that] were swimming here and there," and Jinny Love wants to sacrifice the orphans to "get the snakes stirred up" so that they will "be chased away by the time me go in." Mrs. Gruenwald warns of "stobs and cypress roots" (115) in the water, where "the sharp hard knobs came up where least expected" (116). Before Nina, Jinny, and Easter have their nautical misadventure, Jinny Love protests that "there's stobs in the lake. We'd be upset" (130). Further, the young girls hardly seem adept in the water. Although Welty notes that some of the girls rather eagerly "ripped their dresses off over their heads" (114), she also states that none of the orphans "could or would swim, ever"; instead, "they just stood waist-deep and waited for the d!p to be over" (115). The Morgana girls seem scarcely more at ease; although Nina claims that she can swim, Jinny Love points out her inexperience (130). This plethora of phallic imagery and the girls' floundering fear in the water paradoxically suggest that the lake serves not merely as a site for refreshment but also as a symbol of dangerous male sexuality. Since Moon Lake abounds with such powerfully sexual symbolism, the question of who controls the lake becomes crucial to an understanding not only of this story but, in fact, of the whole novel. The overprotective matriarchal regime of the camp at Moon Lake reflects the ordering principle of Morgana itself. The token male presence, in the forms of Booney Holifield and young Loch Morrison, possesses little or no real authority. Although Mr. Holifield serves as "the man to be sure and have around the camp" (121), he has a well-known record of lazy obliviousness: Julia Demmin and Daniel Curley note that in "June Recital" he "slept through love and fire and madness" (245). In the story, Nina Carmichael observes, "He hasn't got a gun to jump out with" (121), a none-too-subtle jab at Booney's lack of sexual and physical power. …